Day, Harris and Hadfield (2001:6) state that“leadership is the process of building and maintaining a sense of vision, culture and interpersonal relationships, whereas management is the coordination, support and monitoring of schoolactivities”. To enact both roles successfully requires a careful balancing act. Ribbens and Gunter (2002) explain that education leadership practice has a number of overlapping parts to which various labels are attached: – educational administration, educational management and educational policy. Effective leadership is generally accepted a being a central component in securing and sustaining school improvement. Muijs and Harris (2003:437) point out that “evidence from school improvement literature consistently highlights that effective leader’s exercise a powerful influence on schools’ capacity to improve learner achievement.”
McLennan and Thurlow (2003:1) are of the opinion that South Africa requires a paradigm shift in education management training and believe that the scientific education management approach should be replaced by a new approach that focuses on the leadership role of the manager in change management, relationship building, strategic alignment and continuous learning.
Gunter and Ribbens (2002:387) state that “leadership engaging with issues of knowledge and knowledge production is a demanding task, as it requires description, understanding and explanation of what is done, how it is done, who does it, where is it done and why is it done”.
Nkomo, Chisholm and McKinney (2004, in Department of Education 2008) state that education management and leadership are burdened with the task of ensuring that teachers are equipped to facilitate cultural understanding and cooperation both in schools and society. There is a critical need for all school managers to engage in the new society imbued with the values and principles of an enlightened, modern and democratic constitution. Leaders must be ethical in their approach to the work situation.
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Grace (1995:55) explains that “leadership in general must maintain an ethical focus, which is oriented towards democratic values within a community and this has to do with the meaning of ethics historically – as a search for the good life of a community. Ethics refers to a more comprehensive construct than just individual behaviour; rather, it implicates us, as well as how we as a moral community live our communal lives”.James (2000) highlights six ethical values that underpin the work of the education system in South Africa. These are equity, tolerance, multilingualism, openness, accountability and social honour. These values show how the South African government sees the role of education as one that can strengthen the democratic platform of the nation. According to Jansen and Taylor (2003), the first democratic government in South Africa has made significant advances in the schooling sector and provision is now more equitably provided than at any time in the country’s history.
However, a lack of systematic thinking and implementation capacity has been major barriers in reaching the stated goals of educational reform in post- apartheid South Africa. Furthermore, there is every indication that basic education in South Africa remains one of the most inefficient and ineffective in Africa, despite the per capita amounts spent on South African learners.
The Department of Education (2008) explains that there are three elements which relate to the professional work of any principal, namely:- to take action to develop the school, to ensure that leaders know their school leadership function; and to ensure that leadership functions are fulfilled effectively within the school. Rosenholtz (1989) explains that in general there are two types of schools in South Africa, namely schools that are stuck and schools that are moved through teamwork. Stuck schools are schools with lower levels of learner achievement where teachers work on their own (seldom asking for help) and there is little to no evidence of leadership. In a moving school, there is evidence that teacher work more collaboratively. This includes the principal of the school who helps teacher to achieve goals and consequently learner achievement improves.
Moving schools do not necessarily have all the equipment and resources, but with a teaching force that works together to solve problems many obstacles can
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be overcome. Moving schools have principals who lead, as well as teacher who also lead in terms of their classrooms or departments. There is a collaborative approach to leading evident in all parts of the school.
A principle that underlies African leadership and management is called umuntu, which means, a person is a person through other human beings or Umuntungumuntungabantui n Xhosa. Khoza (2005) states that, too often, Africa sees itself as an outpost of America or Europe, which is evident in the way business behaves. In the corporate world the Eurocentric business practices are seen in decision-making informed by power relations rather than consensus; institutional conflict as a result of power positions; and managerial designs that include strategy, school structure, systems, financial and other controls.
2.2.4 Conclusion
The conditions to ensure quality education were identified as those that are crucial and that have an impact on the outcome of quality education in schools. They assist in setting the professional work standards for any leader and would contribute to the uplifting the quality of education. They provide a favourable setting in which the inputs could lead to quality leadership. When conditions are inadequate, effective teaching and learning will be reduced; thus, the attempts of providing quality education at schools could be influenced negatively and teachers’ contribution to the quality of education could be affected. The conditions discussed influence the outcome of quality leadership in schools.
2.3 THE THEORIES OF TRADITIONAL SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
In leadership studies, Jenlink (2002) and Horn (2002) are among the researchers who lead efforts to bring theory and practice, theoreticians and practitioners into a new relationship. The challenge is to test theory against practice and to include the practitioners as partners in theory development. In this study, practitioners are leaders at school level and the theory is the role of distributive leadership as strategy to enhance the development of school leadership.
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Gorton, Alston and Snowden (2007) identify trait, behavioural and contingency as study relevant to educational administration. Firstly, the trait approach as leadership study started around 1940 with trait studies on attributes of natural leaders focusing on their personalities, motives, values and skills, but none of these studies could discover universal traits for leadership success. Stogdill (1948) has observed leaders displaying some advantageous managerial trails over non-leaders but none of these traits were clearly superior.
Secondly, the examination of leaders’ behaviour was undertaken from the 1950s, which produced two-dimensional models. Bowers and Seashore (1996) have developed a model that examines employee-centric behaviour against job- centric behaviour, leading to a task-relationship dichotomy for leadership behaviour. Owen (2007) has developed a behavioural approach to education, which examines administrative against human behaviour. Administrative behaviour includes planning, organising and coordinating, and human behaviour includes subordinates, motivation and management of conflict.
Thirdly, the contingency approach was examined around the 1970s, which recognised dependency of leadership effectiveness on school situations. House (1971) identifies contextual factors influencing the processes of leadership such as environment, subordinates and tasks.
This particular study is based on the behavioural approach identified by Owen (2007). The researcher wants to assume that, through the distribution of leadership, staff can work together to achieve a common goal. Leadership teams can be motivators who support the whole school to achieve the common goal and ensure that teaching and learning improve to a level that are acceptable on a national standard as identified in the government policies. The next section will clarify the theory of contemporary school leadership in more detail.
Crowther, Kaagan, Ferguson and Hann (2002) consider four popular approaches to contemporary educational leadership: – transformational, strategic, educational and school. This particular study embeds the school and school contemporary leadership theories to achieve the aims and objectives of the
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study. According to Bates (1992), culture-building is emphasised by school leadership. Duigan and Macpherson (1992:3) argue that “school leadership implies responsible involvement in the politics of the school”.
Lindsay, Robins and Terrell (2003) argue that school leadership requires culturally proficient leaders who respect and know about individual as well as school cultures to interact effectively in various cultural environments within the school.
Giddens (2003) states that besides cultural proficiency change of orientated leadership encourages school innovation. Due to fundamental social change in the knowledge economy, there is increasing tension between fundamentalism and cosmopolitanism reflecting conflict between universal rules and diversity. The distribution of leadership can have a positive impact on innovation because leaders share leadership tasks and work together as a team to develop the school to be a better learning organisation.
Duckers (1985) comments that knowledge-based innovations may be the hardest to succeed, demanding the availability of all the necessary knowledge. The researcher wants to make the assumption that sharing of leadership could have a positive impact on knowledge gaining
Leaders will work together in smaller teams as leaders and share knowledge and experiences to develop the school through effective innovations processes. According to Pogrow (1996), successful innovations must be highly structured and easily monitored. Heifetz (1994) explains that, emerging from education literature on school leadership is the notion of shared leadership, suggesting enhancement of capability to accomplish effective work collectively. Innovations have been developed and implemented through the coaching and mentoring model as a distributed leadership strategy to ensure effective schools in South Africa. Pounder, Ogawa and Adams (1995: 567) state that “leadership from school principals, teachers, administrators and parents have positive effects on school performance”. The objectives and aims of this study were achieved through school and contemporary leadership theory.
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Levine (2005:3) emphasises that “action study conducted should be driven by practice and useful to practitioners and policy makers”. The researcher wants to answer the question: What is the role of distributive leadership to ensure effective schools in South Africa? In this particular study, the practice is “effective schools” and useful is “the role of distributive leadership to ensure that schools are effective. This will be discussed in the next section.
2.4. SCHOOL LEADERSHIP THEORY TO PRACTICE WITH ACTION
STUDY
Sagor (2000) defines action study as a disciplined process of inquiring, conducted by those and for those taking the action. The primary reason for engaging in action study is to assist the actor in improving or refining actions. In this study, the action was to analyse the role distributive leadership comparatively to ensure effective schools in South Africa. Glanz (2005) suggests that many teacher view the role of leaders in action study as facilitators of the work of teachers and educational leaders should become involved in action study for their own professional development. The researcher decided to improve his own practice as middle leader by investigating and comparatively analyse the role of distributive leadership to ensure effective schools. Stringer (2004) states that action study process is critical for school improvement and lasting change. The researcher has achieved the goal of how a distributive leadership model can be conceptualised as leadership strategy to ensure effective schools in South Africa through this study. Ferrance (2000) has developed a six-step action study cycle.
Table 2.2: Six-step study cycle (Ferrance, 2000)
Steps in study cycle Evidence in this study Identifying a focus for their
project
Engaged in the process of identifying a focus for their project. In this particular study, the focus is to examine the role of distributive leadership to ensure effective schools in South Africa.
Collecting data Data collected in this study through qualitative interviews and analysing school documents. Data also collected through qualitative interviews and the case study in chapter 4.
Analysing and interpretation of data
Data analysed by means of coding and comparative analysis between samples in South Africa. Data discussed in the empirical study in chapter 5.
Taking action on the evidence To write a case study on the sample in South Africa on the effectiveness of the distributed leadership model.
Evaluating the results Implementation of distributive leadership model to be used in schools in South Africa. Clear focus on coaching and mentoring as strategies to ensure that the distributed leadership model is effective. Coaching and mentoring strategies can ensure that schools in South Africa are more effective. Identifying the next steps Use findings and recommendations from this study to clarify new topics for future investigations.
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The action learning and study process provides the participants with the opportunity not to be confident in admitting and sharing their shortcomings. The power of action learning and study processes does not only help bring change into classroom practices but also in this study to go beyond professional development.
Leadership is collective and since a group can have more than one leader operating at a time, the researcher is of the opinion that members in a group might be operating as leaders together. Drath and Palus (1994) are of the opinion that collective leadership takes place when members in a group are working together towards a common purpose and goal.
According to Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958), power can be increased by everyone when working together. Since leaders perform a variety of responsibilities in a school, it may be counterproductive to insist that there is only one leader operating at any one time. For example, a classroom assistant, who knows the abilities of individual learners can help teachers figure out how to solve a problem and may be just as important to the group as the leader. However, the leader does not relinquish the leadership role as members of the group turn their attention to the classroom assistant. The two of them as well as many others can offer their leadership at the same time.
In this study, the common goal was to ensure that leadership is distributed to ensure effective schools in South Africa. Block (1996) states that leadership is collaborative when the views of all leaders and staff members count to achieve a common goal. In this study, the effectiveness of schools was achieved through the coaching and mentoring model as a distributed leadership strategy to ensure effective school in South Africa. The concept of distributed leadership will be discussed in more detail.
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2.5 DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP IN SCHOOLS
2.5.1 Introduction
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (2007) is of the opinion that distributed leadership is a term often used loosely to describe the traditional management structure redesigned to involve more people in decision-making and leadership roles within schools.
Spillane, Halverson and Diamond (2004) have highlighted in their study the ways in which leadership is constructed from the widespread distribution throughout schools and the extent to which leaders influence the contribution of others, so that leadership may be said to be stretched over the social and situational contexts.
The National College for school leadership (2004) also conducted a study and find that there are six ways to distribute leadership:
• Formal; • Pragmatic; • Strategic; • Incremental, • Opportunistic and • Cultural.
These six ways can also be considered phases in a development process. To begin, a school would need to create awareness of distributed leadership. In later phases, work to build trust, confidence, knowledge, and attitudes, enriched by feedback, would move it in increments from formal to cultural distribution.
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Figure 2.1: Taxonomy of leadership distribution (The National College for school leadership, 2004)
Distributed leadership generally refers to a formal school structure with a tendency to emphasise line management. The diagram below will clarify the three tiers of distribution. The diagram below, developed by ATL (2007:3), shows “the three tiers of distributed leadership”.
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Furthermore, a model was developed to show the distribution of leadership within primary schools. ATL (2007) is of the opinion that the model above is useful in many small to medium-sized primary schools, where a distributed leadership model would be effective to a majority of staff but exclude a small minority. ATL suggests that senior management teams should include other staff in decision- making processes through consultations, taskforces and open meetings when applicable to a given situation. ATL (2007:4) has “developed a diagram that indicates how tasks can be distributed amongst senior leaders and key staff within a primary school”.
Figure 2.3: Distributed management structure within a primary school (ATL, 2007:4)
The goal of this study was to clarify structures of distributed leadership used in primary schools. The findings regarding the structures used in South Africa was discussed in chapter five of this study. The link between distributed leadership and democratic leadership will be discussed.